Fortune Is a Woman (35 page)

“Même chose, non?”

Yes, exactly the same. Venus threw her coat on the back of the tattered couch and the cat sat up and stretched before landing to the floor with a thud and strolling over to it. Ugh, she thought, as it began plucking, drooling, and kneading. Honestly, she’d seen better behaved strays in the projects.

“She likes you,” Claudine said, scratching behind its ears and wiping its double chin. “You see?”

“She just has expensive taste, I think.”

“You think that’s so?” Claudine asked. Venus Angelo was looking all grown up these days. With her new coif, much more French than Américain. “Moi aussi.”

“English, Claudine. English, s’il vous plait.”

Claudine was flushed, her eyes twinkling like a pair of jewels. She might be too fond of this arrogant Américain with the bruised lip who spoke no French. “Oh-kay, Venus,” she said, turning for the kitchen. “Some chocolat for bed?”

_____

The rain in Spain falls mainly in Madrid, or so it seemed. Helaine sat on the window seat staring at the soggy city through rain-spattered panes, waiting for Lydia to call, waiting for Carlos to bring the hot chocolate.

She dreamt of her mother last night. One of those peculiar and elusive dreams that one remembers having but doesn’t. God, her parents had been dead so long, she couldn’t recall the last time she had dreamt about them. She didn’t know if she’d seen her father in this one. She had the feeling he wasn’t there, but then she felt sure she had heard him. What had he said to her?

“Come in, Carlos. It’s open.”

“Here you go. Hot chocolate, toast, melon…and the papers, if you can bear them.”

She could not. “I’ll pass today. Thank you, though.”

The press was sexing up the tour, quoting her out of context in order to create more controversy, controversy being such a good stimulus for sales and all. She didn’t know which was worse, the conservative media or the liberal. Both were at each other’s throats, bickering about her and berating their opposition. It was a bloody din, morning, noon, and night. A full blown Kristenson slugfest, the stress of which had made her miss her period.

“What am I today?”

“I didn’t read them yet,” he fibbed.

“Carlos.”

“A Gandhi.”

“Yah–and what else?”

“A passive-aggressive-antisocial-radical-female-supremacist. Eat your breakfast, you man-eater.”

“Ouch.”

“You asked.”

“So I did. No more interviews, Carlos. I never cared for interviews. I’m not doing anymore interviews. They can kiss my–”

“No interviews. Gotcha. Now what I’ve planned for these next two days is a little rest and rehabilitation starting with a massage this morning at eight. Do you want your bath before or after?”

A bath or a massage was the furthest from her mind right now. “Carlos, can you get rid of Chuck and Antonio? I don’t want Lydia to know I need bodyguards. Get rid of them for me, would you? As a Christmas present?”

The bodyguards were a bone of contention between them. She claimed to be conscious of their presence awake or sleeping. “Impossible, Dr. Kristenson. You said so yourself, you need them. Besides,” he said, noticing her playing with her food, “they don’t eat much. Just like you.”

Jesus how she needed to menstruate. “Fine,” she replied, poking with a piece of toast at the scum floating in her cup and ignoring what seemed to be a condescending smile. “I’ll have my bath after the massage.”

It would prove one day to be a very good thing for Helaine that Carlos Montague was infatuated with her, but for the moment, as it pertained to armed guards, it was an inconvenience.

“After it is. And there’s your phone call, so I’ll see you for lunch then.”

“Thanks, Carlos…hello…yes…Lydia?”

“Lana. Are you alone?”

She listened for the door. “Alone now, good morning.”

“Good evening. We have to stop meeting like this.”

“Do you want to stop?”

“Never. I wouldn’t know how.”

“I could design a twelve-step program for you if you like. I’m qualified.”

“I’d relapse after the eleventh.”

“Oh, good. I’m not sorry to hear that. How’s the weather?”

“Cold. How’s Spain?”

“Damp.”

“Ah…me, too.”

“Darling, did anyone ever tell you you’re a terrible tease?”

_____

Brain-teasers and margaritas. Paula was taking it easy by the pool tonight, resting up for the annual Treadwell holiday bash tomorrow evening and keeping one eye on her husband as he swam his laps in a crawl so laboriously slow she didn’t know how he managed to stay afloat.

Fifteen down: seven letters. Un-sunken treasure?

She was trying in vain to call Lydia since the woman had failed to RSVP as requested, but all she could get at the Kristenson-Beaumont fortress was a busy signal. It was nothing but an exercise in futility, she suspected, but she sent her another text message on the cell phone anyway.

“Honestly, Mr. Treadwell, a rubber duckie could swim faster than that!”

He didn’t appear to hear her.

Seven letters down, with an
o
and an
m
–who the hell could she be talking to for so long? She circled Lydia’s name and put a question mark beside it. Over fifty guests tomorrow, most of them shitheads. Ho! ho! ho! Talking to Delilah Lewiston probably. Paula checked her list to make sure she had invited Delilah. Guest number twenty-nine: martinis. Ms. Lewiston had RSVP’d. She wrote herself a reminder to call the maintenance man to clean the pool in the morning in case anybody fell in.

Dickie must have heard her after all.

“Well, what’d you think of that?” he asked, fishing for a compliment and dripping like a wet dog all over her legs.

“Mark Spitz on Quaaludes, if you really want to know.”

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s Ms. I’m-just-a-visitor-on-this-planet Beaumont.”

“Oh, her. She’s not coming?”

“I don’t know.”

“Flotsam,” he said, toweling off.

“Flotsam?”

“Fifteen down.”

Fifteen down was…flotsam.

Rrriiinnng!

“Hello?”

“Paula, I forgot.”

“You’re coming?”

“Yes, sorry.”

Lydia Beaumont, guest number one: no alcohol. Paula wrote “flotsa” beside her name and penciled in “Lydiaam” on the crossword, in her perturbation never noticing the errors.

_____

He was mistaken if he believed that Stanley Kandinsky Esq. could hush up his divorce if his wife sued him for one, or that he would offer him his shoulder to cry on. His lawyer was too familiar with the facts for any of that nonsense. The best save-face measure he could take, Stanley advised, was to strike first and immediately file for a no-fault. That would leave Edward Beaumont wide open to speculation but spare him the public ridicule, ridicule being something that the notorious womanizer was simply not up to at this juncture, if ever.

He’d have his pride; she’d have half their assets. No contest. And it would only take the amount of time required to fill out a form and write a check to change his life forever. And Marilyn’s.

“Who’s the guy?” Stanley inquired, when the paperwork was done.

“Some Mountain William.”

“And that is…?”

“A fancy term for hillbilly.”

“Oh, I see. Where did Marilyn meet her mountain man, if I may ask?”

“My daughter’s redoing our summer home. He’s the carpenter.”

“A carpenter. Hmmm. And how is Lydia these days? I never see her anymore save in the news now and then and of course in the financials. Though that’s probably a good thing, huh?”

“Stan,” Edward muttered, “we’ve been your bread and butter here and you know it.”

Stanley’s eyes were black and unsympathetic. “You’ll feel better in the morning,” he said, humorlessly.

And in a weird way Edward did.

She

She
arrived at the Treadwell’s early and instructed her driver to be out front by ten so she could be home early. No slight to Paula, but she needed to touch base with Helaine before the flight tomorrow morning and she didn’t want to be too tired or too drunk when she called.

The atmosphere at the mansion was tense in anticipation of the guests who Paula expected would be coming all at once. Lydia stayed out of her way and made small talk with Dickie as Paula took out her frustrations on the help and skittered to and fro, barking her orders at the back of bowed heads and sighing emphatically. Dickie smiled with a mixture of amusement and awe and offered Lydia a drink which she declined.

“She is magnificent,” he said, more as a question than a fact.

Lydia acceded that much. Paula was magnificent. And overwhelming.

“No booze in the punch, my dear.”

She tried it but it was too sweet without booze. A hunk of a waiter appeared with a tray of hors d’oeuvres–canapés with caviar, celery and carrots, deviled eggs. Dickie relieved him of his burden and the two of them devoured the goodies for supper while Paula glared over her shoulder at them as she all but whipped the sound-man for failing to produce his tunes on time, kicking at his six-foot speaker as one would a dumb animal who refused to get out of the way.

“But, but, but,” Lydia could hear him whining, which she knew from experience would get him nowhere.

“It is wrong to say you only live once,” Dickie said, waxing philosophical. “You only die once.” He grabbed a bottle of champagne and her hand. “Let’s scrounge up some dessert, kiddo.”

Lydia followed him into the kitchen and together they absconded with a cheese cake and a basket of fresh strawberries, settling into chaise lounges by the pool to eat as much as they could before Paula discovered the theft and would come looking for them.

“Aren’t we lucky, Lydia? All these spoils?”

They were lucky, she said. The cheese cake went splendidly with champagne, he said. She believed him but should abstain from the bubbly, she said. That was too bad, he said, because it was a very good year. It was indeed a good year, she said, but it wasn’t over yet.

It didn’t take long to ferret out the thieves.

“Your guests are finally arriving,” Paula said, giving her husband the hairy eyeball. “Have we anything left to serve them?”

“Yes, Mrs. Treadwell,” he said, looping his arm through hers and beckoning Lydia to join them. “We have ice.”

“Ice! Don’t even dream of leaving now that you’re full,” Paula warned Lydia.

“Perish the thought,” Lydia replied. “What time is it?”

They were greeted in the main hall to strains of Pachebel and the sound-man, who came rushing to Paula’s side like a dog to its master begging for a bone. She threw him one.

“Excellent,” was the scrap she offered.

Thereafter he was walking on glass, monitoring his bells and whistles with palpable distress and casting furtive glances toward the hostess at the tiniest pop or crackle, wringing his hands, Lydia couldn’t help but think, just like a man preparing himself for his execution.

“Good evening, Ms. Beaumont. Pleasure to see you again.”

She had relegated herself to warming a chair in a corner of the room which she had hoped wouldn’t get much traffic. “Merry Christmas,” she said, clearly not remembering this guest’s name and hoping he wouldn’t bother to refresh her memory.

“Have you met my wife?” he asked.

“No.”

He glanced awkwardly to his wife. “This is my wife,” he said feebly.

(No kidding–where the hell is Delilah?) “Pleased to meet you,” she replied, in her befuddled style. Paula was coming at them, a freight train on fire. The couple excused themselves to make way for her.

“Something I said?”

“Why don’t you socialize?” Paula demanded. “What is so fascinating about this corner?”

“It’s quiet.”

“You know, I often think the only thing interesting about you is your blond.”

“Paula, that’s not nice. True, but not nice. Is Del here yet?”

“Just walked in the door.”

“Excellent. Then I’m socializing.”

_____

She
did not think listless quite qualified as rested, but it was better than the agitated state she had been in before. She ran her hands through her hair and yawned with the disheveled blond at her vanity. Brushes, combs, powder, lipstick, anti-wrinkle cream. She wasn’t pushing fifty anymore, she informed the woman. She was crashing into it.

Once again she had dreamt of her parents. Mother and father this time, but that was the only detail she remembered upon waking, the meaning, if there was any, made vague by her jolt into consciousness and then displaced entirely by the harsh hues of morning, the first sunshine to be had in Madrid for days. It lifted her soul and showed her age, one of life’s bitter little tradeoffs. She snatched a hand towel, covered the mirror with it and opened the window blinds on a gold and purple city.

Through the wall she could hear Carlos stirring, his music blaring the morning revelry, a ritual she had grown accustomed to on the long and now supremely arduous tour. In the corridor, guarding her suite, though she hadn’t looked out there yet, was Antonio. She was positive it was Antonio this morning. She could sense him through the door.

He had talked her into a game of cards yesterday, and she had welcomed the distraction, playing some version of rummy until the afternoon was gone and Chuck showed up to relieve him.

“What did you do before you became a–a–?”

“Hired gun, Dr. Kristenson?”

His English was pretty good.

“Bodyguard, I was going to say.”

“I was what you call in the States a ‘cop.’ The police. You want to analyze me?”

“No, just curious.”

“Analyze me. I do not mind it–rummy.”

Rummy. He won again.

“What do you want me to find, Antonio?”

“Me!”

“Mmhmm.” One of the two most commonly misplaced items in the universe: myself and my keys. “Okay. I’ll say a word and you say the first thing that comes to mind. Do you understand what I’m asking?”

“Yes.”

“We start with
sun
.”